So it all began with a plan to head up to Portland, Dorset with my dive buddy, James Keith from Cornwall. We were loaded like springs for the rescheduled run of the 2011 LIC Pairs Dive.
That was until we heard about the event being called off, again, due to the wild weather wonder of the British summer!
After a few calls and advice from Dorset local Ben Garner, we cracked on!
Late saturday afternoon we pushed off from the Castletown slipway to see if the Crystal Vis crew and Parker brothers had left any fish for us!
Well suffice to say it certainly was not Crystal! Saturdays ocean antics closed with a green murk cocktail, capped with 30 knot westerly aeration!
Saturdays one consolation being two sublimely large lamb shish kebabs from one of Weymouth’s finest stag and hen eateries!

Sunday dawned with the general melas in the Castletown car park and slipway of a few BSAC clubs getting ready for their pout and bib viewing trips.
James and I were joined by another spearo buddy, Scott, and we suited up and got the kit down onto the gravel as fortunately the Rib was already afloat.
From here it could have gone either way as I battled to start the motor and keep it idling. Add to this, I was getting nailed by little shocks of electric current coming through the throttle control!
I managed to load the guys up and we shot off across a 35 knot whipped Portland Harbour. We had hopes for at least somewhere to dive.
As we motored over HMS Hood we noticed the swell and Balaclava Bay was even murkier than the previous evening, so it was either work the east side of Portland or go left to the waters outside the harbour. We went left.
We chose a spot and anchored up.
James jumped in first and promptly reported terrible vis and quote, “it’s almost unfishable…”. Then Scott joined him and began to have his own scout down current from the boat.
I sat on the boat having got ready and feeling kind of gutted about the apparent conditions, put the bung back on the speartip, sat down and had a drink! I seriously at this point almost decided to just leave the gun onboard and just go and have some exploratory deep dives to see if I could get under the murk. Must have been Neptunes voice I heard in my mind say “always take the gun”….in I jumped.

I began the breathe up for my first dive, just off the boat on the uptide of the two already in.
I folded and began my descent inverted as you have all done many a time. I must have been 4-6m down, when I first saw the first fast mover barely through the 2m murk…now it’s sounds a bit crazy but I immediately thought, “bloody hell, that’s a big mullet!!!, whoa!?!, what?!?!, huge pollack?!?!?, NO! is it one of those Amberjacks?!?!?, by which time it was turning hard and fast after an arc from right to left, F#%K!!!!! It’s a TUNA!!!! There’s TWO!!!! I was arching back up and the RA 7mm tip in my 90 came straight up and onto the charge line of the huge head of a storming lead Tuna . Bang! The spear exploded at almost point blank range into the top of the gill plate, down through the bulk, exiting the left flank of the belly. Time stopped momentarily there for me. I just stared at it in utter shock believing I had stoned it. The tuna came to life and I came back into the gravity of the what it was doing in the broken vis. It went ballistic doing multiple wraps of spear line, gun and float line round and round my legs! I fought frantically out of the tangle and away from the crazed circles this tuna was doing. If I pulled, the fish pulled harder and down! I was getting small breaths when I could surface and so after what seemed an eternity of tugging and finning, I was slowly heading towards the boat. James by now was sat on one of the sponsons and I managed to shout…”I have shot a effin TUNA!!!”
I honestly got the most nonchalant glance and nod of Yeah right from James. I moved towards the boat and managed to hand up a section of float line to James who suddenly had very big eyes while feeling the pull of this fish but not being able to see it! I grabbed his gun, battling to calm myself for a dive and and possibly put a second shot in. I dived, aimed and missed, while the tuna continued it’s spirals now with added tangle!
The tuna had begun to slow and keep to a certain depth on the tension of the float line. I decided it was time to bring this magnificent fish up and into the boat. I dived down and grabbed the spear and fish securely, finned up and brought him right up to James who have the leverage to heave it up over the sponson and into the back of the boat! YES! Could I relax? No!
Utter shock across the faces of us all. The other two naturally jumped back in and I just sat myself down next to MY TUNA!
Besides an almost comical and literally shocking (as in jolts!), rubber jacket hand wrapped throttle arm, we beached onto the Castletown gravel.
The faces from the now returned scuba boats was a sight.
Amazing experience and perhaps I’m rambling on now but this tuna deserves it!
Thanks to James, Scott and Titus for the support yesterday. Truly stoked!

Regards to all.
Brett

From Brandon Wahlers
“For the past 3 years Ive been putting a lot of effort and research into putting a trip together to this spot, and this year I was able to finally set it all up and get out to these few spots where I have heard of monster tuna being taken.
I managed to get out there twice before, and both trips were good, with fish up to 250lbs, but no chances at anything in the 300lb range.
This trip it was just Justin Allen and I on the panga diving, so I was stoked to have half the pressure on the fish as we had on the last two trips.
As soon as we made it out to the spot late that afternoon, we could see action all around: birds diving, bait popping, and nice tunas jumping. We tried dropping a marker buoy, but there was so much current that even with plenty of line we couldn’t get the marker to hold. Scrapping that Idea I quickly made the decision to start our drift about a mile up current of the spot, just in front of where the birds were working.
On my first dive to 50ft, I found the vis to be only about 15-20 ft, but I was immediately schooled by tuna from 80-200lbs that followed me up to the surface. The next dive I made was a to 60, and I saw some bigger fish in the 200lb range. Things were looking good, and I knew we had a chance for a monster.
Justin was still getting his rig ready in the boat and I told him what I saw. Him and the Pangero both hinted that I shoot one quickly so we would at least have some fish to cook on the grill that night since we were camping.
The next dive I saw mostly 80-100lb fish, and I lined up on one 5ft away, ready to get a brainshot. I ended up missing the brain by less than and inch, but fought him up to the surface quickly and clipped the buoy off to my shooting line. I went down to brain the fish, and saw my slip tip toggled perfectly. Struggling and spinning around a few times trying to dispatch the fish with my knife, the slip tip somehow pulled back out and stabbed me in the palm, opening up a fairly deep wound.

I got back in the boat completely confused and in pain, telling Justin I was done diving for the day, and he should take my big gun in and look for a monster. After his first dive he yelled that he was seeing big fish everywhere. I checked the sounder and it was lit up with tuna from 30ft all the way to 150. With my hand bleeding like crazy and nothing on the panga to fix it, I grabbed Justins 140 euro gun and got in the water. I made 3 dives in a row getting schooled by 80-200 lb tuna each time, with some fish coming within 3 ft of my face. This was as wide open as I’d ever seen tuna while diving.
The next dive, I was again schooled by fish in the 150lb range. I sank down to 67ft trying to see if there were bigger fish deeper, when looking up I saw a super long bottom sickle fin behind 5 fish in front of me. That being the sign of a monster, I had to almost push the 150 lb tunas in front of me out of the way, and I finally got a full view of this MONSTER tuna. Its sickle fins almost made it back to its tail, and it was an incredibly tall and fat fish, not swimming how the other fish were at all, rather it was waddling. As soon as it saw me, it started to move off pretty quickly, so I lined up and shot it just as it was going out of visibility from about 14ft away.
The fish took off like a freight train and towed me over 3 miles in over an hour. I was using Justin’s rig with 50ft of hard floatline and 50ft of bungee, and the clip on his buoy was not holding the bungee very well. For the life of me I couldn’t get the fish above 80ft, so all my dives trying to second shoot the fish were to at least that depth. The first 4 times I tried to get a second shot the fish would see me from 10ft away just as I was about to shoot and take off for another 5 minutes. I finally got a second shaft into the fish and it started to bleed a lot, really slowing him down. Soon enough I had the buoy clipped off at the shooting line and took my trusty Riffe 130 Euro down to shoot him in the brain.

Only once I got my hands in this fishes gills did I realize that he was WAY over 300lbs, an absolute toad!!
It took 3 of us to get him in the boat, and he ended up 77inches long, with a 61 inch girth.
Using the girth squared X length, divided by 800 formula the fish came out to 358lbs, truly the fish of a lifetime! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find a certified scale within 100 miles to weigh him on, but Im still on cloud 9 after shooting this monster!!”

For more on Brandon Wahlers check out Team Riffe at: http://www.speargun.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=37

Check out the video from this week in the Bluewater off Florida

Big King Mackerel and a well placed shot in Bluewater

Not heeding my own advice in “Slow Summer Spearing Solutions”, we headed out early this week and hit a few of our favorite “secret” spots on the East and West Coast of Florida. In both cases within a few minutes of arriving at the spots another boat was on it and pushy as could be to anchor right on top of our heads. In the morning everyone is so fired up to get right on their GPS numbers and all manners seem to go out the window even though you still have 10 more hours of dive/fishable time.
The spots in the morning produced a few good fish but things didn’t really start to turn on until the afternoon.
From 2 miles out we could see the flotilla of boats and as we motored in slowly one and then two left leaving us with the wreck all to ourselves. Despite having been dove countless times during the day and one of the last boats leaving full of Scuba Spearfisherman, we had high hopes for a shark filled adventure and big Gag Groupers.
Anchor down at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the sea was like a lake. On each of our first dives we were greeted by swarms of Groupers both Gag and Black as well as Big Dusky and Hammerhead sharks. Because of the sharks GR had encountered the week before (upwards of 15 big pissed off Bulls, Dusky and Sandbar) he volunteered to cover the two of us while we made the first couple of dives and push off the toothy critters so we could land our fish.
Well the sharks must have been sleeping because on the first 4 dives we made we landed 4 groupers and didn’t lose a one. There were Permit and Mangrove Snappers on every dive as well and you would never have guessed a dozen boats had already hit the spot that day.

A few days and few hundred miles earlier in the week I had made another trip in search of pelagics wide on the East Coast of the US. With the Labor Day crowds we opted to go long and after covering more than 40 miles of ocean we came across a floating buoy that had a section of line hanging off of it. We quickly suited up and once in the clear water were surrounded by Dolphin (mahimahi, Dorado) from 1-15 lbs. With the school circling I watched the perimeter and down below for in the summertime and with a group of fish this size there was surely to be other predators in the area.

On countless occasions we have found schools of small dolphin and learned the hard way that it pays to be patient and wait for what might be eating the dolphin to come up instead of wasting a trigger pull on a 4 lb Peanut watching and waiting for the ever present Wahoo, Tuna or Marlin that was sure to be lurking in the distance.
For this reason it is always good to get in the water with a gun suited for shooting Wahoo when you are checking out flotsam, weedlines, or kelp paddies in warmer climates. When the wahoo do come they are usually just out of reach of your normal reef gun and the trend towards bigger more reliable equipment and bluewater set ups has allowed more divers to land good fish in the past few years.
The setups used this day were 50′ Riffe Bungey and 50′ Armor Spectra Float lines and single 33 liter buoys, 130 Riffe Euro, Wong Hybrid 60 and Horizontal Reel rigged with 200ft of Spectra line.

These same rigs with an added length of floatline or Bungey serve well for hunting the drop-offs and deep wrecks for pelagics all over the world when the fish are less than 100 lbs. (figure one 2 Atmosphere float per 140 lbs of fish you are hunting to be safe or 1 regular float per 75 lbs of fish)
Rig smart for bluewater fish.
Unlike reefs and wrecks in shallow water, there is unlimited room to run for Pelagic fish and in deep water a Tuna or Amberjack can run down and out of sight and never return. Once they get your buoy under water and have momentum and are heading down it is likely they won’t stop because the buoys will begin crushing and lose their buoyancy. (hence the reason for the 2 atm Riffe Floats)
The solution to this is using Bungey and stronger buoys. With bungey you have ample time to get a hand on your floats and the stretch of the bungey acts as a drag and slows the fish down reducing their forward(downward) force.
There is nothing like hunting in the bluewater but at the end of the day its nice to come in to the shallows and relish in seeing the bottom at only 75′. Get out there and enjoy the warmth of the summer and the cool of the evenings and sweat at the end of the day with a heavy cooler full of hard earned fillets of your bluewater fish.

GR and Ben with the days catch on the West Coast of Florida

Aaron Kirkconnell Scott and his big cousin Cameron. Same stoked smile on the first big yellowfin Tuna he has seen up close on his first bluewater trip

Yeah there were a few sharks around too....

Aaron and one of 8 Blackfin Tuna he shot in the few days we dove. He got the hand of it pretty quick and was only picking out the 25 lb'ers. Spoiled Rotten.

Aaron's first Wahoo at 50 lbs. I was on the surface beside him watching the whole thing screaming in the snorkel to swim towards them. On the drive over I had talked for 6 straight hours on how to hunt them and all the other bluewater fish, telling him things I don't even let on to my friends. He listened, and he already had a lot of raw skill and 15 years under his belt of being surrounded by the sport. He shot this first one from about 6 feet away and had his choice of the entire school. Mad skills. I'm scared he is going to be better than all of us...

Still smiling 6 months later I'm sure

Admittedly this one was a fluke. I was looking for Wahoo and a school of 10 big Yellowfins came up. I had the camera in my left hand and made the dive following them to a whopping 56 ft to take the shot. They all had long sickle fins back to their tails so I knew they were 130+lbs and was praying they were bigger. With a single Riffe 2 Atmosphere float and a 100 ft bungee I had him up within three minutes and Aaron put the second shot in him. Chad had the video camera so for fun I brought him up while he was very much alive and as he came to the surface snatched his tail out of the water. Predictably he went batshit and made a circle of whitewater about ten yards wide. His tail beat against my left bicep so fast and hard it was like getting hit with an axe. When I finally let him go my glove and my brand new dive knife got caught in the cable and I lost them both. Could have been my hand, or my leg or my neck. Just goes to show (practice what your preach) always kill your big fish before you try to get your hands on them. It happened the very next day with Lindsey grabbing a feisty one the same size and he lost all the bungee he had worked so hard to get to him and it took another 5 minutes to get the fish in.

I won't be doing that again. It didn't even make my muscles look bigger

Chad Morris with a stud Wahoo. WE never seem to have a bad trip when we go together.

Nothing better then seeing your friends happy. Chad Morris with the biggest fish of the trip and a huge smile on his face

119 lb Wahoo from last year. Just a few lbs short of the World Record. The visibility was about as bad as it gets. On the surface was less than a few inches. I had to put my watch against my mask to see it.A fins free ascent in the Grotto in Saipan. Another DJ Struntz Photo

11lb Lobster Freediving last month in North Carolina

11lb Langosta Freediving

Big Bull Dolphin in Gulf of Mexico

Dolphin Camoflauge. Riffe Cryptic suit and this fish fit perfect.

A nice Pacific Cubera Snapper dragged up on a deep dive off Mexico. Brad got this one on film from start to finish then I filmed him stoning the smaller one with a Hawaiian sling. I'd put him up against anyone with a Hawaiian sling he is arguably one of the best in the world with them for sure.

Nice East Coast Cubera Snapper shot by Chris Gardinal. I'm claiming the assist since I saw it floating a half mile from the Wreck enroute to the next spot and then we gaffed it to land it. 63 lbs.

Nice Black Grouper in the Florida Keys. This is one of the first trips with the 130 Euro and the results were pretty good.

119lb Wahoo.

100+lb Yellowfin Tuna in the Gulf of Mexico. On my fourth drop of the day he came up and coaxed me deeper. I pulled the trigger at 77 feet and it was a long drop for so early in the day at 1:34. Just goes to show that being in shape is important so you can be ready at any time.

There is so much to this photo it goes to show why DJ Struntz is one of the best photographers in the world. This is Craig diving down to get his hands on a nice Rainbow Runner, It had just started raining and we were rushing to get some pics in the clear water before the sun disappeared. The angle of the pic is just right so that he is facing the part of the sky away from the black ominous cloud that is sending the rain to sprinkle the surface and give it that amazing texture. The Yellow/orange glow in the upper left is actually the oil rig through the surface of the water. Amazing picture. Craigs posture and the action that you can feel through the picture doesn't happen every day.

I first met Stevo in East Nusa Tengarra (Indonesia). I was there with a few of my buddies hunting Dogtooth Tuna and Waves and he was there with Wes Mannion and his cameraman catching snakes and monitors and anything else that moved. The first afternoon I surfed with just the three of us out and we talked about all the different travels we'd had and he said he was jealous at what a good life I'd been able to lead. Hearing him hooting on the shoulder as I dropped in on a wave and doing the same for him was one of the coolest experiences. As it turns out two Cyclones trapped us all on the little island and we were stuck together for 2 weeks trading stories and catching snakes and waves. We all became good friends and when we finally escaped back to Bali we had some big nights out on the town together. Steve and Wes were one of the big reasons I started going to Australia. Great people. He was as passionate about life off camera as he was on and the smile on his face in the mornings when he'd meet us to get on the boat to take out surfing and spearing couldn't do justice for how stoked he was to have spent the last four hours chasing cobras in the Rice Paddies while we were out shooting breakfast. And he thought we were nuts! Classic Steve, we're surfing double overhead Nusa Dua and he suddenly bails off his board to chase down a sea snake that has surfaced in the lineup.

My first Mulloway (Jewfish) Australias version of a White Sea Bass. Not the smartest fish in the ocean. If you can find them you can get them most of the time. This one was in a huge school of fish on a drop off. The swim so tightly together its a wonder more doubles aren't speared. Its difficult to choose the big ones out of the school. A week later we were diving the coast in 6 foot vis and I crept up on a school of 10 lb ones that were schooled up in front of a big rock. Waiting trying to figure out which one was the biggest the rock suddenly turned and I realized it was a Mulloway that was easily 80-100 lbs. I sent a hail mary shot into the dark but to no avail. I'm still bummed I missed out on that one. I've never even seen one like that in pictures.

Big Black Grouper and Amberjack Pole Spearing in the Bahamas. Brad Thornbrough hit the AJ with a hawaiian sling and it took us 10 minutes to chase him down and get him in the boat. I know you could care less about where the fish came from though. Not too shabby for a crew huh?

275 lbs Pacific Blue Marlin World Record

GR (RedTide) Tarr and my dad Kirk Kirkconnell with a good day of Wahoo in Florida. One of my favorite days on the water watching my dad shoot his first hoo. This was also one of the best 5 minutes of my spearfishing life. GR and I let my dad shoot all day and we filmed until he was ready to take a break for a bit. Next drift the school came by and I stoned one, reached the surface and yelled for dad to get in the water, strung the first one, reloaded, stoned another one, strung him, reloaded and had the third within 3 minutes. The boat was only about 150 yards away and it happened so fast I don't think the wahoo, me or anyone else really believed it when I handed the gun and 150 lbs of fish into the boat. What a blur. This same day GR shot a big one and stoned it but it fell off the shaft. While he was reloaded we drifted over the fish which was laying on the bottom at 100 ft. GR dives down and grabs it in the gills and it instantly comes to life and like a striped underwater scooter, shot him to the surface so fast I could almost hear him laughing underwater and his eyes were bugging out of his head it was so hilarious.

I think it was the Saint Pete Open that was coming up the next day and I couldn't get anyone that wanted to dive it with me. The day before I went out and took pictures and video of each of the fish that I wanted to shoot and sent them to a few of my friends trying to convince them to do the tourney with me. This is a 15 lb Mangrove Snapper. We took 1st and 2nd Place in the Tournament. Nole Karcher couldn't handle seeing this one and made the drive to the east coast...This Amberjack was the same day that Steve blacked out and I ended up shooting him. In all that day I shot an 85 and 105lb Amberjack and Steve Bennet who was around 165. One of the best and worst days of my life.

Craig and the Tiger Shark. This was a gnarly day as you can imagine. I spent most of it in the boat so DJ and Ryan could get some time in the water spearing. This is the only pic we have with both me and the Tiger shark in the same frame. If you look really closely you can see a little white speck over craigs shoulder. That is me, swimming with a beer in my hand, no fins on, chasing the boat which is drifting close by.